


the nature of daylight

by FoxNonny



Category: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, I have emotions I need to process, like seriously major spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxNonny/pseuds/FoxNonny
Summary: Time moves differently when you count your age in centuries over years. An hour ago, Thor had his brother back. Smiling. Laughing.





	the nature of daylight

**Author's Note:**

> the movie didn't give me time to mourn so fuck it I'm mourning. title is from a piece of music by max richter that is stuck in my head and hurting me right now.

When you have lived over a millennia, a year is hardly more than a breath. A day, scarcely a blink. An hour is nothing; a grain of sand, a speck of dust, an atom. 

It took less than an hour for Thanos to destroy Thor's ship, slaughter his people. Less than an hour for Heimdall, and only moments for...

It was an incomplete victory, but a victory nonetheless, and one that he could live with, leaving Asgard as they did. Allowing it to fall, as they did. It was the people, not the city, that truly carried Asgard's spirit. He'd saved them, nearly all of them, as many as he could. His best friend at his side.

His brother, truly his  _brother_  again, at his side. An hour ago, his little brother smiled. Laughed. 

And there again was the slip of time that longevity grants, because his friends - younger friends, mortal friends, but friends nonetheless - could never understand why he forgave Loki again and again. To them, the years wore on, their time so very short, and all they'd known of Loki was madness and pain, and Thor could not fault them for that. Loki had destroyed. Murdered. Betrayed and betrayed again. 

But for Thor, all that was a mere few minutes, a drop in an ocean of time; Loki had ever been a trickster, had ever shown teeth and an edge that cut friend and foe alike, but they had always been brothers. No matter the pain, no matter how hard Loki tried - and he seemed to try  _damned_  hard at times - there was nothing he could do that would kill Thor's love for him. Not really. 

An hour ago, he had his brother back. Smiling. Laughing.

Dangling in Thanos's grasp, Thor was torn, watching Loki try to find that cruelty again, and knowing he couldn't. Praying he would. Praying his brother would do whatever it took to survive, because that's what Loki  _did_. He ran, he hid, he always slithered away.

_What a terrible time to find your courage, brother._

Heimdall's death was like having some essential part of him cut away - having recently lost an eye, Thor knew the feeling intimately. He would have preferred to lose another eye, rather than be forced to watch Heimdall's murder with the one he had left. 

Loki was never going to be quick enough to best Thanos. Thor knew that. He knew, he  _knew_  his brother was dead the moment he produced the knife. But he said nothing, because if there was a slim crack of hope, the slightest chance, the smallest loophole, the most unlikely solution,  _Loki would find it._

If Loki had truly been Thor's brother, in blood as well as bond, it would have taken more than Thanos's crushing fist to kill him. 

" _You will never be a god_ ," he'd said, choked; and he would know. Loki would have known. He'd learned that lesson, made peace with it, only in the very last trailing specks of dust of his long, long life. 

Over a millennia, and yet it feels to Thor as if he just witnessed his brother die young. 

If an hour is nothing, then why do these seconds drag on? Why has time slowed for him? Why is there an eternity that Thor is trapped in now, surrounded by the corpses that once held the spirit of Asgard, all burning in a sickly purple flame to ash?

Why does it feel like centuries, millennia, endless and looping and never-ending, the time it takes for him to reach, to lay his bloodied hand on his brother's unmoving chest? Why does the universe give him so much time to memorize the emptiness of Loki's eyes, his slack mouth, his bruised and bloodshot features? 

He'd looked so small, in Thanos's grip. His little brother Loki had looked so small compared to the monster that killed him. 

Not long ago, Thor had expected Loki to abandon them all, abandon  _him_ , for his own purposes, but he hadn't. Loki had stayed with him. Smiled. Laughed. 

If he'd been cruel and selfish, he'd still be alive. Loki's goodness, the goodness Thor had hoped and prayed was still buried deep within all these years, brought him here. To this end. Still, and growing cold under Thor's hand.

Thor hears himself whisper his brother's name. 

It's a relief when the blast comes, and as time starts to make itself known again, mercifully quick.


End file.
